Information & Security Engineering Executive Director, Chief Information Officer
As the Information & Security Engineering Executive Director and Chief Information Officer for Sandia National Laboratories, John Zepper provides leadership in information technology services, cybersecurity and mission computing, and safeguards & security. In 2025 he served as the Chair for the National Laboratories Chief Information Officers (NLCIO).
In his previous roles at Sandia, John led Sandia’s Space Mission Program and served as the Director of the Labs’ Systems Mission Engineering, an organization of more than 400 scientists, engineers and technologists that develop distributed sensing systems to solve a broad spectrum of problems of national importance for the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
John has vast experience delivering products using agile coding techniques in the cloud environment. In particular, he was responsible for creating large, real-time information systems that process data from multiple U.S. satellite systems, performing research in information surety topics, and providing decision support systems. He also headed development of path-finding satellite systems that advanced mission performance beyond the state of the art.
In 2018, John contributed to a team that established an agile code development space to enhance collaboration and productivity. The following year, he played a key role in the Science and Technology Advancing Resilience for Contested Space initiative, which strengthens the nation’s capabilities in the space domain.
John has been part of several award-winning teams. He and his colleagues were named Popular Science’s “Grand Award Winner in Engineering” for the Gigabit Passive Optical Network, recognized as the best innovation of the year. In 2016, he and his team received the DOE Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award for their contributions to the Space-Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Starter Processor. John also played a key role in the development of Hardware Acceleration of Adaptive Neural Algorithms, a spatial-temporal neuromorphic processor initiative that achieved processing speeds 100 times faster and energy efficiency 1,000 times greater for cybersecurity applications.
Throughout his 40-year career in the NNSA community, John has led Sandia’s Cyber Security Services & Technologies Program, the Nuclear Weapons Classified Computing Service Improvement Program, and the core team for the Nuclear Weapons Joint Computational Engineering Laboratory Program. He has also gained valuable leadership experience in building Advanced Simulation & Computing (ASC) supercomputers and writing parallel code for the Nuclear Weapons ASC Engineering Program. Most recently, John has been instrumental in integrating artificial intelligence and digital engineering.
John holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of New Mexico, where he met his wife. Together, they have two daughters, a son, and three grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, restoring vintage motor scooters and beekeeping.
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